Nausea ***signed

*** signed

Nau­sea taken from the tit­le of Sartres 1938 exis­ten­ti­al novelis a body of pho­to­graphs that regis­ters the inte­riors of public schools in Baton Rouge, Loui­sia­na and Atlan­ta, Geor­gia from 1990–92 by Ame­ri­can pho­to­gra­pher Ron Jude. Depar­ting from mere docu­men­ta­ti­on, Jude lures us into pee­ring through win­dows, door­ways and crevices of walls into empty class­rooms and cor­ri­dors, as we beco­me increa­singly con­scious of the perils of our own gaze and the uncer­tain­ty of loo­king. Nau­sea estab­lished the buil­ding blocks for the next twen­ty-five years of Judes pho­to­gra­phic out­put, inclu­ding Other Natu­re, Alpi­ne Star, Lick Creek Line and Lago.

At the heart of Nau­sea lies the pre­mi­se that phi­lo­so­phi­cal inqui­ry might be fil­te­red and con­su­med through pho­to­graphs, just as it is fil­te­red through Sartres work of litera­ry fic­tion. Taking as his sub­ject the bana­li­ty of insti­tu­tio­nal lear­ning, the mono­to­nous spaces and objec­ts cap­tu­red in Nau­sea ser­ve as a plat­form for explo­ring the nexus bet­ween the nar­ra­ti­ve limi­ta­ti­ons of pho­to­gra­phy and con­scious­ness. Employ­ing a dis­tinc­tive visu­al lan­guage, mar­ked by an acu­te sen­se of colour, radi­cal framing and shal­low focus, Jude crea­ted a world both fami­li­ar and uncan­ny, imbued with a per­va­si­ve sen­se of unea­se.

To mark the 25th anni­ver­s­a­ry of the inau­gu­ral exhi­bi­ti­on of Nau­sea in 1992 at The Pho­to­graph­ers Gal­le­ry in Lon­don, Jude has made an ent­i­re­ly new edit of this work.
Many of the pho­to­graphs in this volu­me have never befo­re been published or exhi­bi­ted.